JMToWin is a high-stakes tournament champion (Thunderdome, Luxury Box, Game Changer, Wildcat, King of the Hill/Beach, Spy, etc.) who focuses on the DraftKings Main Slate
This is, instead, a look at the player pool I’ll be fishing
:: covered in-depth in the Angles Pod (it’s highly recommended that you listen to the breakdown of the roster in order to see the thinking behind it, and in order to understand what we’re talking about when we look at a “bottom-up build”)
:: my “Tier 1” plays: the plays I feel confident leaning into across different types of builds; these players have a high ceiling and a low likelihood of price-considered failure
:: games, offenses, situations, or scenarios I’ll be looking to build around across my rosters
:: unique player pairings that can be used as foundational building blocks for tournament rosters
:: players who don’t fit into the categories above — either Upside pieces who don’t have the floor to be Blue Chips (and are not being focused on within my game-focused builds) or players who may not have a strong shot at ceiling, but are worth keeping in mind from a “role” perspective
Full breakdown (of what this is, and what the thinking is behind these players) can (and should) be found in the Angles Pod (on the One Week Season podcast feed).
Tyrod Taylor
Clyde Edwards-Helaire
Zamir White
Puka Nacua
Rashid Shaheed
Michael Wilson
Darren Waller
George Kittle
Broncos
Free
Build with a salary cap of $44k or below!
1st Place = 250 Edge Points + Rare Blue Name Tag in Discord
2nd Place = 100 Edge Points
3rd Place = 75 Edge Points
4th Place = 50 Edge Points
5th Place = 25 Edge Points
*1 Edge Point = $1 in DFS courses on OWS
*must use an OWS avatar (found on your profile page) to be eligible to win
We’ll get deeper into this in the Building Blocks section of my Player Grid (I would also recommend listening to this week’s Angles Pod — on the OWS YouTube channel, or on the OWS podcast feed — to get a clearer sense of how I’m seeing this slate from a macro/strategy perspective), but the short of it is :: there is no “individual Blue Chip play” on this slate (according to my definition of a Blue Chip), but there are a few sources of certainty, as the concentrated Rams are playing the Giants, the 49ers are playing the Commanders, and the Eagles are playing the Cardinals. It’s likely that we get at least one score of 27+ DK points from each of these teams — and if scores of 27+ DK points prove to be in short supply this week (which is also likely), rosters that have two or three pieces from these offenses are going to have a better shot than most at reaching the tops of the leaderboards.
In the 1970s comedy classic What’s Up, Doc?, Dr. Howard Bannister is wearing his name tag upside-down at a conference, and he has no idea what people mean when they keep telling him, “You’re upside-down.” Same as Dr. Howard Bannister’s name tag: this build is upside-down against what the field will be looking to do. The story: “CMC and Kyren score in the high-teens to low-20s.”
CMC and Kyren are great plays. But the field is expressing high levels of confidence in the story of “CMC and Kyren hitting” — and while (again) that’s very much within the realm of reasonable possibilities, it’s also possible that both of these guys score in the high-teens to low-20s. Kyren has scored 20.2 or fewer DK points in three of his last five games — and in these three games, Kupp has a game of 28.5, while Puka has games of 26.9 and 36.0. Similarly, CMC has scored 22.3 or fewer DK points in four of his last seven games — and in these four games, Deebo has games of 37.0 and 38.8, and Kittle has price-considered smashes of 22.9 and 23.6. Ownership on Kupp, Puka, Deebo, and Aiyuk are low, and if CMC and Kyren prove to be overpriced this week, we’ll not only see a large chunk of the field getting hurt by this, but we’ll also probably see one of the other pieces on their teams hitting for a low-owned big game. This is the type of spot where we want to let strategy dictate our decisions, rather than making our decisions through the lens of “predictions.” What would make us the most money over time, if we could play out this slate over and over again? — going overweight pass catchers on these teams. I still like CMC and Kyren plenty this week, but going “upside down” here is hugely +EV.
If CMC and Kyren score in the high-teens or low-20s and your cheaper running backs (White and CEH in this example, but could also be guys in the $6k range if you want) are able to match that score, you’ll be WAY ahead of the field, as you’ll have the same score as the field at RB, but you’ll also have a shot at a pair of monster WR scores that the field won’t have the salary to chase. Given the leverage and the available ceiling if this approach clicks into place as “the best way to build this week,” you won’t have to worry much about strategy or ownership on the rest of your roster with this building block in place.
The story plays out differently, and you don’t get first place — which is really all that matters.
This is my narrowest pool, which means it’s the pool likeliest to change a bit as I move deeper into builds. If it changes throughout Saturday night, I’ll add an update in this space.
If I were building for single-entry // three-entry Max, my tightened-up player pool would be:
Hurts || Lamar || Mahomes || Stroud || Purdy || Stafford || Carr || Tyrod
I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend!
-JM
